Burnt Match Smell
I have a 2013 Mitsubishi Outlander Sport LE. I bought it in
2017 with 31,000 miles. After a week or so I noticed a
strong rotten egg or sulfur smell when I would press the
gas hard, smells like striking a match and immediately
blowing it out. I also noticed that it seemed like it has a
hard time accelerating from 20 to 40 mph, like it would
shift to a higher gear too soon, and I have to give it about
3/4 throttle before it will downshift a gear. So basically it
feels like a complete loss of power between 20 to 40mph
unless I force a downshift. Then I also noticed that I was
only getting an average of about 18 mpg in the city and 23
mpg on the highway even though the specs call for 27 city
31 highway.
Now fast forward and the sulfur smell is much worse, I
sometimes smell it even when I don’t accelerate hard.
Note that I do only smell it when the driver window is
down. Gas mileage is still the same. Acceleration issue
seems to be slightly worse. No service engine lights on at
all or any history in the obd2. I’ve had the $200 engine
clean treatment done by valvoline, I’ve used at least 5
different kinds of engine cleaner products from Autozone
that you put in your gas tank, including CataClean. The
car drives great while the stuff is in the tank, but as soon
as I refuel it’s back to degraded performance. When I step
on the gas though it really gets up and goes. Sometimes
when I get out after driving I smell burnt rubber, the smell
like when someone powerbrakes. The recommended
octane is 87 and I’ve tried all octanes, no difference. For
the past 4 months I’ve been using ethanol free 87/89
octane fuel only. At first it seemed to help but not now. I
cannot make the car produce this smell when it’s parked,
even if I rev the engine while in gear with the brakes on.
It’s under warranty with only 41k miles on it now and the
dealer says they don’t see any of the issues I’m pointing
out but that’s because they don’t want to fix the car for
free under warranty. Can someone help me troubleshoot
this myself so I can just have a normal running vehicle like
I intended when I bought it? It is the cvt 2 wheel drive
version.
